A little more than a month before his promotion to additional chief secretary slated on January 1, 2025, chairman of Indira Gandhi Canal Board Kunji Lal Meena has got relief from Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB).
The agency has given clean chit to IAS Kunji Lal Meena, then RAS and now promoted to IAS Manish Goyal and assistant section officer Hari Mohan in the alleged Rs 12-lakh bribery case for a land conversion in Udaipur.
The agency has found middleman Lokesh Jain culprit and has filed chargesheet against him in a special ACB court. The court gave clean it to all the officers and has found middleman Lokesh guilty.
The court, however, has directed department of personnel to take action against Hari Mohan Meena for providing copy of NoC to middleman Lokesh who claimed that he had got the work done by bribing officers.
What is the case?
Last year in May, ACB had registered a case against them UDH principal secretary Kunji Lal Meena, then joint secretary Manish Goyal and Hari Mohan Meena on the basis of audio recording provided by the complainant in a land conversion case. In the audio recording middleman Lokesh Jain is claiming that money is being demanded by Kunji Lal Meena and other officers for land conversion. ACB had also investigated assets of Kunji Lal Meena but didn't find any anomaly.
No case pending, but damage has been done
The ACB said that there is no investigation pending in this case.
However, the allegations have proved costly to Kunji Lal Meena, who was then serving as principal secretary UDH. He was then shunted to the post of director general Indira Gandhi Panchayatiraj Sansthan, where now Subodh Agrawal is serving. Agrawal has been also shunted to this post after allegations in Jal Jeevan Mission, where Directorate of Enforcement (ED) has not found anything conclusive so far.
Similarly, Maneesh Goyal then joint secretary UDH, was also transferred to a non consequential post of CEO voluntary area development centre in planning department.
Recently he has been promoted to IAS and is serving as joint secretary education department.
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